From the Editor

s the Translation Journal enters its twelfth year of uninterrupted publication, a few explanations to our readers and authors are in order.

It's worth repeating: The TJ is not intended to be an academic journal. While we welcome scholarly articles, our main purpose is to serve the working professional translator by providing him or her with useful and interesting information. Our articles are edited for grammar, spelling, and style (and occasionally for content), but not formally peer-reviewed. If you wish to publish for academic credit, there are many excellent publications that serve this purpose.

We are open to translators from all countries and of all nationalities, and we strive for a balance among authors from different parts of the world. However, most of our articles are written in English or one of the major European languages. Since English is not the mother tongue of many of our authors, some articles need a greater editing effort than others. Also, some authors are less computer-savvy than others or simply fail to read the instructions given in the Submission Guidelines, making their articles difficult or impossible to format for the Web. A small minority of authors submit articles with spelling and other errors that show that they did not even re-read or spell-check their work before submitting it for publication.

Therefore we are forced by the restraints of time and available manpower for editing to pre-screen the articles that are submitted for publication in the Translation Journal, rejecting those that lack informative content or do not serve the intended purpose of the TJ for other reasons. We may also reject articles that do not comply with the Submission Guidelines either by being submitted incomplete, without the author's photo and bio, or by ignoring the formatting and other instructions provided in the Guidelines. We will continue to give preference to articles written in correct idiomatic English, about translation into or from the major European languages. We would like to suggest, especially to our non-native English-speaking authors, to use simple language, to avoid words and expressions the exact meaning of which they are not sure of, to carefully read and spell-check their work (using a U.S. English spell-checker) and, preferably, have it checked by a native English speaker. By so proceeding, they will greatly increase the chances of their work being published in the Translation Journal.

We try to respond to all messages and submissions received but, given the volume of incoming mail, this is becoming increasingly difficult. E-mail sent from certain addresses may also be rejected by our junk mail filters. Therefore, we apologize if we haven't answered your message or if we did so with a long delay. If you haven't received a reply from us within a few weeks from the date of your message, please re-send it. We appreciate your contacting us. The Translation Journal couldn't exist without the expertise of our authors and their generosity to share it.